ThinkProgress: A school in Arkansas wants any potential shooters to know: Its teachers are armed, and ready for a showdown.What would Jesus do, right? Even if we accept that taking up the sword and not turning the other cheek is the entirely Christian approach to violence, this is still a terrible idea. “[S]erious questions persist about the wisdom of arming teachers,” the report goes on. “Even trained police have a track record of mistakenly firing on civilians in standoff situations, raising concerns about whether a teacher in a roomful of children could be any more equipped to deal with a crazed gunman. What’s more, it might not be in the interest of a school to let its staff carry deadly weapons; in Kansas, a school that armed its teachers was denied coverage by major insurers, who deemed the armed teachers too great of a risk.”
Since the Arkansas Christian Academy is a private school, it is not subject to the rules for public schools in the state that prevent teachers from carrying firearms. To that end, the school has between one and seven staff members carrying a weapon on any given day, according to Pastor Perry Black, who this week posted signs that say “Staff is armed and trained. Any attempt to harm children will be met with deadly force.”
Black also professed to having armed guards outside of his Sunday church services. “We reserve our right as American citizens and as Christians to protect the children on our campus,” Black told KARK.
Further, most of the bloodiest school massacres share one trait in common — the shooters committed suicide. I’m pretty sure that the fear of imminent death is no obstacle to the suicidal. In fact, since “deadly force” is promised by the signage and death is often the killers’ “escape route,” Black may have made his school more attractive to mass murderers, not less. It would just be a variation on “suicide by cop.”
All in all, nothing about this is a good idea. More guns are not the answer to school violence.
